At the beginning of 2024, I set out to read and reflect on one spiritual classic a month. Bearing in mind that only about 9% of people complete their New Year’s resolutions at all, I was content to complete mine a bit late with gratitude for the 12 books this past year that each helped me grow closer to God in different ways.
At the close of the old year and the beginning of a new one, I took up “The Sadness of Christ,” the last work that St. Thomas More ever wrote before being beheaded in 1535 for his opposition to King Henry VIII’s claim to be the supreme head of the church in England.
The work — written during More’s 15-month imprisonment in the Tower of London — contains meditations likely inspired by his impending martyrdom, but also features simple and practical advice on prayer and living life in view of the final end of eternal salvation.
He began by emphasizing the need to put oneself in God’s presence during prayer despite the natural human tendency toward bodily comfort and allowing the mind to wander.
Reflections on prayer
Referencing Christ’s example of falling on the ground in prayer to humbly ask that this cup pass from him, More asked how often in prayer “will we have a cushion laid under” our knees and “a cushion to bear up our elbows too, and so like an old rotten ruinous house, we be fain therewith to be stayed and underpropped. And then further do we every way discover, how far wide our mind is wandering from God.”
In prostrating himself in prayer, he wrote, Christ provides a warning that “we ought not only secretly with our heart, but also with our body openly in the face of the world, to serve and honour God, the creator of them both.” Christ’s action showed us “a sample himself of most humble submission in prayer; who with such lowly outward gesture worshipped his heavenly Father.”
With words that may resonate to the modern reader amid the modern church’s abuse scandals, More — who had to contend in his own time with priests in England who lacked the courage to stand for the faith — offered encouragement to the faithful to be ever vigilant and pray for sinful priests due to their impact on the community of believers.
He wrote that Christ is “delivered into the hands of sinners, whensoever his blessed body in the holy sacrament is consecrated and handled of beastly, vicious, and most abominable priests” and in these cases, “let us reckon that Christ himself then speaketh these words unto us afresh: ‘Why sleep you? Watch, arise, and pray, that you enter not into temptation. For the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners.'”
By the examples of these priests, “vice and evil living lightly increase and creep in among the people.” The worse the priests are, he wrote, the more is it necessary for people “to watch, rise, and heartily pray for themselves, and yet not for themselves only, but for such priests.”
The call to martyrdom
More offered what was likely a very personal reflection on the call to martyrdom, drawing comfort from Christ’s example during his anguish in the garden of Gethsemane.
Taking Christ’s words from Matthew, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death,” he wrote that some may “marvel how this could be, that our saviour Christ, being very God equal with his almighty Father, could be heavy, sad, and sorrowful.”
He saw Christ’s expression of sorrow partly as a recognition that “to suffer martyrdom nature is not able without the help of grace” and for those in the church who were afraid of suffering for Christ’s sake to “pluck up thy courage, faint heart, and despair never a deal.”
Christ himself “vanquished the whole world,” but felt “far more fear, sorrow, weariness, and much more inward anguish” before his “most bitter painful passion.”
“He that is stronghearted may find a thousand glorious valiant martyrs, whose example he may right joyfully follow,” he wrote, but he imagined that Christ would tell the fearful martyr: “O timorous and weak silly sheep, think it sufficient for thee, only to walk after me, which am thy shepherd and governor, and so mistrust thyself and put thy trust in me. For this self same dreadful passage lo! have I myself passed before thee. Take hold on the hem of my garment therefore.”
More’s life is a heroic tale of martyrdom as he chose to die “the King’s good servant and God’s first,” but for today’s Catholic who might have trouble imagining dying for the faith and who struggles every day to follow in Christ’s footsteps, there is something especially comforting about his encouragement to the “timorous and weak silly sheep” who needs to take hold of Christ’s garment in order to suffer for his sake.
At this conclusion of my year of journeying through the spiritual classics, these last written words from St. Thomas More offered a timely reminder to have courage and lean on Christ in the face of struggles new and old for his strength “is made perfect in weakness.”
Lauretta Brown is culture editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @LaurettaBrown6.
